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A cultural relaxation that's no longer mellow

MAASTRICHT, Netherlands — Watched over by a contented Mona Lisa with a large reefer between her lips, clients of the Smoky Boat offer a cozy picture of peace, playing backgammon and sipping juice between puffs from cigarettes laced with hashish or marijuana.

The tranquillity, however, could come to an abrupt end. Marc Josemans, the owner of the Smoky Boat, a cannabis café on a docked river barge in Maastricht, said he might soon be packing up his menu of pungent "Nirvana Special," "Silver Haze" and "Super Skunk."

The mayor wants to move most of the city's 16 licensed cannabis cafés to the edge of town, preferably close to the border.

Maastricht, a medieval town on the Meuse River in the hilly south of the Netherlands, has long cherished its rare position, a short distance from Belgium and Germany, which gives its people a casual ease with foreign languages, food and visitors.

But as the southernmost point of the nation with the most lenient soft-drug laws in Europe, Maastricht has also turned into a hub for foreign smokers and dealers. It is estimated that more than one million drug tourists a year come from neighboring countries to shop.

The multimillion-dollar trade has spawned a supply chain of illicit growers and underground traders.

It was not meant to be this way.

"People who come from far away don't just come for the five grams you can buy legally over the counter," said Piet Tans, a police spokesman. "They think pounds and kilos; they go to dealers who operate in the shadows."

The police regularly destroy indoor nurseries, often detected because of the high electricity bills run up by the grow lights, he said. But new nurseries, hidden in attics and basements, keep springing up to feed the international clientele. Tans said the flourishing drug tourism had also attracted pushers of harder drugs from Amsterdam, who often harass people on the streets.

Residents complain of traffic problems, petty crime, loitering and public urinating. There have been shootouts between Balkan gangs.

Maastricht's small police force says that it cannot cope and that it is spending one-third of its time on drug-related problems.

The mayor, Gerd Leers, and the town council have been searching for answers. Forbidding sales to nonresidents would probably violate European anti- discrimination rules, and closing the cannabis cafés is not the solution either, he said. "The trade will just go underground because demand will not disappear."

So he has drawn up a plan to move at least half the cafés away from the charming narrow downtown streets and resettle them along the highways near the borders.

He has met with mayors from a dozen nearby Belgian and German towns and villages, explaining his ideas and pleading for cross-border solidarity and greater collaboration. Some have signed a cooperation plan, but others have protested.

Huub Broers, mayor of the nearby Belgian town of Voeren, is one who objected to getting the new outlets on his doorstep.

The Dutch brought on the problem themselves, he said: If there were no sales in Maastricht, the French and the Belgians would not go to stock up there.

But Leers contends that Maastricht has merely borne the brunt of a general problem that the mayors would otherwise find at home.

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Several other Dutch border cities intend to relocate their cannabis outlets. "We have already moved two cafés close to the frontier with Germany, where most clients come from," said Rick van Druten, a town official in Venlo.

"They buy and turn around," he said. "It solved a lot of congestion and loitering."

The problem in Maastricht and other border towns echoes a broader tension that has grown since The Netherlands began allowing the regulated sale of marijuana and hashish in 1976.

As national borders lost their role in Europe's common market, many domestic laws, including drug policies, have remained far apart. The Dutch have lobbied for their neighbors to follow them, while others, including France, want the Dutch to tighten drug regulations.

In practice, holding a small cache of drugs is rarely punished in Western Europe, but the Dutch have been clearer about setting rules: The cannabis cafés can sell five grams, or about a fifth of an ounce, per person of marijuana or hashish. For clients younger than 18, harder drugs and alcohol are forbidden. In Maastricht, half of the original 32 cafés have been shut down because of violations.

Despite such clear rules, another basic problem lingers: The cafés are licensed to sell the drugs, but it is illegal to produce or transport their supplies.

"It's a crazy situation," said Josemans, who owns another café besides the Smoky Boat and who is head of the local cannabis café owners' association. "Every day I'm obliged to commit crimes because I have to stock up illegally. But at the same time I pay taxes on the sales."

"It's all very hypocritical," he said. "So I have delivery boys going back and forth, because I can keep only 500 grams in stock. A liquor store can keep a thousand liters and has quality control."

Leers, who says that at heart he is a prohibitionist, and Josemans have at least this in common: Both believe that as long as people can sell, they should be allowed to cultivate the plants. "Illegal growers use pesticides and fertilizer and make smoking more dangerous," Josemans said.

The mayor has asked the government to allow Maastricht to experiment with supervised, legal plantations to cut out the criminal groups. In speeches and articles, he has railed against the present policy. "Either you close this back door or you regulate it," he argued in Parliament. "It's like telling a baker that he can sell bread but he is not allowed to buy flour."

The impending plan to move the drug commerce to the outskirts of town has been debated by the owners of other cafés, like the Blue Dream, Slow Motion and Wall Street.

Some of them see new opportunity.

One has proposed buying the former customs office on the Dutch-Belgian border.

Some old-timers see only risks in leaving the intimate atmosphere of the inner city.

The owners of the paraphernalia shops - the downtown boutiques that sell water pipes, candles, rolling paper and other drug accessories - are said to be worried.

Josemans said he would be one of the first to open an outlet along the highway near Belgium. "I've been in this trade for 25 years, and I'll do it for a while longer," he said. "I won't recommend cannabis as a way of life, but it's O.K. for recreation."

And, at least for now, it is still good for business. His new highway café, will provide a reading room, snacks, fresh juice and an Internet corner.